


To the Bottom of the Soda

by Grania



Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton, The West Wing
Genre: Gen, The crossover to end all crossovers, just imagine that the outsiders happened in the 80es or something, with wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 01:35:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grania/pseuds/Grania
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stupid idea that I've had since I started watching The West Wing (damn you, Rob Lowe!).</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the Bottom of the Soda

Darry was not good with telephones, that’s why they talked through mails and letters nowadays. Soda ignored voluntarily that it needed two people for a phone-conversation, and secretly he was rather glad. They were both better when they could think about their words before sending them.  
Anyway, it was a surprise for Soda, when the phone rang one evening while he was still in the New-Hampshire-headquarter, and he realised that it was a number from Oklahoma.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”, was the first thing he heard, before he could even say one word.  
He jumped up from his desk and hurried through the crowded room to find some privacy outside.

“Darry, wha…”

“Did you fall on your head? Should I come and take you home?”

“I’m fine. Let me explain!”  
The door fell shut behind him, and he was alone in the dark city, huddled under a streetlight.

“What’s there to explain? You threw your life away for some rich-ass, senile…”

“Hey!”, he interrupted. Not necessarily because he was angry at Darry, but more because he knew his brother expected it.  
“He’s the right one, Darry! I can feel it!”  
At least he had felt it when he had written the letter, the same evening that he had left New York with Josh. Now, though, he was less convinced, but he would have rather bitten off his tongue than admit that to Darry. He threw a glance through the windows into the room, and saw Bartlett chewing out somebody, as he did so often, barely kept in check by McGarry.

“Nobody knows him!”, Darry yelled through the phone. “I’ve asked around, and not one has heard his name before! Why did you give up your job for him? You were so fucking close to the top, so close, and now you’ll have nothing once this ends!”

Soda rolled his eyes. “He’s the right one”, he repeated. “I can’t say more than that. If you ever heard him you would believe me. When you hear him talk you know that you’re listening to the President. This isn’t a step down...just...working for him makes more sense than everything I’ve done for the last seven years, man.”  
He should get an award for that performance.

Something rustled in the back of Darry’s side of the line, as if he was looking for something to punch. Then the door opened behind Soda, and one of the new assistants poked her head outside. He could not remember her name.

“Sam! There’s a meeting in three minutes.”

“Thanks...thanks”, he said with a smile, and she disappeared again.

Apparently Darry had heard her.  
“And even if he gets elected, what do you think will be left for you? He’ll kick you to the trash with the old posters. Sam!” 

“I’ll get a job in the communications office”, Soda answered through clenched teeth. “And the way it looks it will be pretty high.”

Darry snorted. “Yeah, right! Maybe Sam Seaborn would get a job, but not Soda Curtis. Does he actually know who you are?”

Soda closed his eyes. He did not need to be reminded of that.  
“Josh does.”

“Josh!”, Darry spat. “That freak is worse than Steve!”

“Don’t say that!”

For a moment there was only silence coming from Tulsa.

“Listen, man”, Darry finally continued. “Maybe Bartlett’s the right thing for the country, but it’s not the right thing for you. You’re not just meddling with Socs, these here have real power, and you’re just one little wheel in their machine.”

Through the window he saw Josh and the others from the team walk to the back room.  
He wanted nothing more than to go home.

“I have to go, there’s a meeting.” He hesitated. “He’s the right one.”

Darry sighed. “If you say so. Just...tell him at least who you are. Because if he ever gets close to Tulsa there will be someone from the neighborhood who’ll recognize you and want a few minutes on television.”

Maybe he should hire Darry for CJ. He did not say it, of course.  
“Yeah, I will. Take care!”

“You too”, Darry grumbled before he hung up, then Soda ran inside to the staff meeting.

*

 

Josh, as great a guy that he was, could not understand him when he told him about the phone call and the fear that Darry had exposed in Soda.  
It was a few days later, and they were sitting in a dingy diner somewhere in Illinois. They had become a serious threat to the other candidates, and a quiet moment between the two of them was rare now that their campaign had sped up.

“I don’t care who you are”, Josh said with his mouth half-full with bread and chicken salad. “And neither does the Governor, or any of the others.”

“Well, they don’t know me, to be honest.” 

“You’re Sam Seaborn, on any document that matters.”

“What if this goes on, and what if it becomes bigger?”

Josh took a sip of his coke. “You mean that someone will expose you?”

The more Soda thought about that, the more violently his skin prickled. “Something like that.”

Josh laughed. “Then what? That doesn’t diminish what you’ve accomplished. And seriously…” He leant in closer. “I don’t understand why you aren’t a bit more proud of yourself and what you’ve reached. Any other guy in your place wouldn’t stop talking about where he comes from and what hard work can get you to. Especially if that guy plans to run one day.”

“I don’t plan to…”, Soda protested. “And if we’re talking about hard work, then my brother’s definitely earned it more.”

“See? That’s the right angle. Use that when you’re going to tell it to the Governor and Leo. And Toby and CJ, for that matter.”

“I’m not going to tell them!”

Josh stopped chewing, and looked up from his plate.

“At least now.”

“Hmm...might be right. Let’s wait until after Illinois. If we lose we’re out anyway, and if we win Bartlett will have a better mood.”

“I love our plans.”

 

*

 

Then life happened, and suddenly Soda was all alone in California.  
All alone meaning without Josh, who had practically been fired from the campaign for one week to mourn his father.  
Soda was sure that Josh would have buried him in the backyard and gone back campaigning had Bartlett not put his foot down.  
Of course it was exactly the week when it went to hell.  
It all started with Soda being stupid. 

Go figure.

It was in the beginning of the week, when he overheard Toby and Bonnie, he had learnt their names finally, as he walked past Bonnie’s desk in the headquarters.

“And he’ll have the speech in the middle of the freaking library?” 

Toby was, as usual, worked up. Soda sometimes wondered whether the privilege to work in the White House would be worth the fact that he would have to answer to Toby.

“Yes, he’ll be standing in the East Wing of the Green Library”, Bonnie answered. “There’ll be a podium, and the audience will be standing in the whole room. Security will clear the whole building, and everybody who wants to come will have to go through them.

“Because that weeds out all the crazies”, Toby growled.

“Stanford?”, Soda chimed in.

“Yes, for the speech next Friday”, Bonnie explained.

“Great. My little brother teaches there. You need help?”

“No…”, Toby answered, ending on a slightly higher note than he started, which made it sound like a question. “You got Pasadena.”

“I know. I just thought…”

“Pasadena…” Again that almost-question.

“Right on!”

 

*

 

The next time he crossed paths with Toby was entirely innocuous and calm.  
Soda should have known better.  
He was practically sitting on his desk, only held back by the phone at his ear, because he should have been at three different places already.  
Toby waited in the door until he had finished and jumped up.

“You occupied?”, he began

“Yeah, I have a meeting with the pollsters and should check on the hall in Pasadena...who makes my appointments?”

“Ginger.”

They meandered their way through the crowded corridors of the headquarter.

Soda frowned. “Yeah, that’s her name. How can I help you?” 

Toby was fidgeting. Soda already knew that it was a sign for something, though he did not yet know him long enough to know for what exactly. He had circled it down to anger, oppressed rage, confusion, or choked down laughter.  
But he wasn’t worried, he did not have time for that anyway.

“There’s not one staff member with the name Seaborn working at Stanford.”

Soda frowned. “So?”

“I wanted to send your brother a personal invitation, in case he wanted to come. Would avoid him a walk through security.”

Soda slowed down. “That’s nice of you.”  
He was genuinely surprised, and up to now had been convinced that Toby did not like him.

Apparently for Toby that was an insult. “Never mind, if he’s half as sentimental as you I wouldn’t want him in the same timezone as Governor Bartlet.”

Soda smiled “Yeah, he goes under...a different name. I’ll call him tonight, tell him that he’s on the guest list.”

He hurried on, through the crowded front room of the headquarters, and was not too sad when Toby lost track of him.

“Okay, then…”, was the last thing Soda heard from him. 

 

*

 

If Soda learnt one thing from Identitygate, as CJ had lovingly dubbed it, it was that it was not good to be on Toby’s list of suspicious people. And also that Toby was doomed, because one day he would bite the wrong ankle, but that was not Soda’s problem.

Josh had not returned yet, and Soda had been buried too deep in preparing the speech in Pasadena to realise what was going on, but it ended, or better, it continued, with him being hauled into Leo’s personal office, where he was awaiting him with Toby and CJ.  
He was still carrying his pen, and felt like he was back in school. That never bode well.

“Hey.”

“Have a seat”, Leo said, and pointed to the chair opposite his desk.

Toby was leaning against the wall, CJ sat on the rest of the couch, and Leo’s chair was higher than the rickety stool anyway, thus he sat down only reluctantly, and only on the edge.

“Sam, it was Josh who hired you, and I like and trust Josh. That’s the reason why I’m ready to give you a chance to explain yourself.”

Soda frowned. He did not answer. It was better to wait for the question first.

“There’s nobody called Seaborn working at Stanford”, Toby said quietly from his corner.

“He’s working under a different name…”, Soda sighed, and scratched his forehead, before he realised that he was imitating one of Toby’s antics, and abruptly stopped. 

“There are no traces of a Samuel Norman Seaborn before he enrolled in Princeton”, CJ continued. 

“And when we’re already at it: You should make up your mind where you come from, Laguna Beach or Tulsa”, Toby added. “Can’t have both.”

Soda, who had been clasping the pen so hard his knuckles stood up white, frowned even more.

“You got access my old meal plan and library card?”

“Yeah”, he answered casually, and shrugged.

“I was just fooling around with that. And what you did was illegal, by the way.”

“Well, if you want to go down that road, let’s talk about your illegal stuff”, Leo growled. “Not even talking about the potential damage you’re causing the campaign!”

Soda groaned, and buried his head in his arms. It was just too much. “I didn’t do anything illegal!”, he exclaimed. “I changed my name. Not because of some big crime in my past, just because...and my brothers are trashing me enough already, so please stop asking. My name is Sam, that’s all you need to know.”

Leo shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not enough.”

Soda had lost his composure, and did not try to regain it. He had his arms propped on his thighs as headrest for lack of a real one, and stared on his shoes.

“Sam?”, CJ asked softly.

“My real last name is Curtis”, he eventually answered flattly. Nobody answered. “Come on!”, he snarled at Toby. “Your brain works fine, you don’t forget my brother’s name once you’ve read it.”

“That’s it?”, Toby almost whispered, and Soda knew him well enough to know that he would be shouting soon. 

“That’s it?” That was already a lot louder.

“Yeah…”

And yelling: “You’re making such a fuss because you’re ashamed of your name?”

“I’m not ashamed!”, Soda yelled, and wanted to bite his tongue, or kick Toby. That hit too close to home.

“We thought you were in a witness protection programme...or just some random conman”, Toby continued to shout. “We thought we could bury the whole campaign because of you!”

“Toby!”, Leo warned, and Toby sighed.

“Ponyboy. His brother’s name is Ponyboy.”

Soda hung his head again.

“Ponyboy?”, Leo asked.

“I swear it’s true”, Toby assured. “Ponyboy Curtis, professor at the arts and literature department. Which, now that I’m thinking about it, is quite some feat, considering that you said he’s younger than you.”

Soda could almost hear Leo’s and CJ’s internal struggle to grasp what they had heard.

“My father’s humor”, Soda explained to the floor.

“Then what’s your real name?”, CJ eventually asked.

Soda sighed, and leant back in his chair. “I’ve come so far”, he said, to no one in the room. “All those years in Princeton, and Duke, and New York...nobody’s ever found out anything...and I let a lot of people very far in my life…”

“Your secret’s safe with us”, Leo said, and it sounded a lot softer than only moments ago. “We were just worried it might be something else. And considering that we’re going to work together for a while…” He broke off.

“Well, apparently my work so far hasn’t been good enough to make me more than ‘the guy Josh brought’”, Soda muttered. He knew he would disappoint them, but then again, his stint with the Bartlett-Hoynes-campaign had been quite disappointing overall so far. He knew CJ would laugh. 

“Does he know?”, she asked, and slid down the rest until she was sitting on the couch.  
“Yeah. Actually, he’s the only one besides my brothers and...and two other friends who know. But he’s always called me Sam.”

“Which means that your brothers and the friends still call you by your old name”, Toby concluded.

“Yes.”

Both CJ and Toby were too polite to ask him again, and in the end it was Leo who ended the meeting before it could get awkward on a whole new level.

“You don’t have to tell us your old name. As long as you don’t damage the campaign.”

Soda exhaled. “Thanks.”

“We’ll lose Oklahoma anyway...I don’t think we’ll be there long enough for somebody from your old life to stumble over you. Is that all?”

Soda and CJ jumped up from their seats. It was clear that all three of them had expected a different reaction from him, but for the moment he did not care at all. All he wanted to do was run back to his office, and lock it from the inside.

 

*

 

“And you didn’t tell them?”

This time they did not even make it to a diner, instead they had headed to a drive-thru on their way north, and now Soda was eating fries with one hand while steering with the other.

“No.”

Josh shook his head, and took a bite out of his burger. “Why not? They can keep it secret...it would be a nice gesture, you know? Show that you value working with them.”

Soda snorted. “I valued working with the team at Gage Whitney too, doesn’t mean I told them.”

For a while they ate in silence, and the music from the radio was the only thing that filled it.

“Do you regret it?”

Soda frowned, and turned his head to look at Josh. Another question was lingering, but Josh did not ask it.

“No!”, Soda answered, both of them. He hesitated. “The first thing Leo said to me when I sat down in his office was that he would not fire me on the spot because he trusts you.”

Of course Josh also realised the reproach that was lingering behind that statement.

“He appreciates your work. Bartlet does too.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m serious.”

Soda twisted his mouth. “Darry warned me. Told me I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, that I wasn’t going against some lazy, false idiots like the Socs or lawyers anymore, but against real power.”

Josh dropped the burger in his lap, and shifted almost entirely in his seat to look at Soda.

“We’re on the same team!”, he said, and it had a strange edge to it. “There’s no ‘going against’ here, we’re all fighting for the same cause.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Soda blinked, surprised to have hit such a sore spot in Josh.

“I know, Josh.”

They let the radio do the talking for the rest of the route.

 

*

 

The turning point for Soda came after the convention, to be exact on the evening after, when Candidate Bartlet insisted, against Josh’s and Toby’s strongest objections, to go out for dinner with his Senior Staff. 

Mainly because it was the moment when he realised that Darry had been wrong, for once in his life.

They ate at an expensive French restaurant, around a round table in a separate room, and for the first two courses Soda was occupied with wondering whether the restaurant had owned such a table before, or whether Bartlett had ordered them to get one.  
They also needed the first two courses for Josh and Toby to finish whining about the wasted evening, until they realised that they did not waste it. 

Soda laid low for most of the evening, he listened more than he talked, and when he did it was to tease Toby together with CJ. 

The waiters had just brought plates with cheese, and Soda hoped that this was not meant to be the dessert, when Bartlet, or Jed, as he was supposed to call him tonight, turned his attention to him.

“So, Sam!”, he began, and winked at him. He ate his cheese with his fingers right off the plate. “You still think you don’t belong?”

“I never said that!”, he answered in the tone that was reserved for opponent lawyers.

“I know you didn’t. I’m just summing up what Leo told me.”

Soda eyed the piece of cheese on his fork, and slowly put it down again.  
“Is that mildew?”, he muttered. 

“It’s delicious”, Jed assured. 

CJ shoved her plate over without so much as moving her arm, and he loaded every cheese with colourful dots over, under the laughter of the whole table.

“lt takes quite something to make Toby look like the sloppy one”, Jed then continued.  
Toby’s eyebrows rose to dangerous heights, and he propped his elbow up on the table. 

“So, you just insult somebody else to make him a compliment? Is that how it works with you?”, he asked in that tone that Soda still was not sure whether it was angry or amused.  
Jed did, on the other hand, and laughed again.

“You know what I mean.”

“He’s just fishing for a compliment for himself”, Josh threw in with a bright grin.

“Well, let me just say: I may not have chosen either of you, but wiser people did, and I could not have come so far without your work, and that’s all that counts. Not where you come from, or what made you who you are, just that you were ready to drop everything to help me.”

They had the decency to not look at Soda, except for Jed, who winked again, and Toby, who was eyeing him expectantly, rubbing the side of his face in his unique fashion.  
Soda sighed, but it was cut short by laughter. Maybe he would regret it in the morning, and blame the wine, but right now he felt ready, and he fished his notepad and pen out of the pocket of his jacket, then he turned his chair to the small table where the waiters stored the beverages.

“What are you doing?”, CJ asked suspiciously close to his shoulder, and he shooed her back to her seat. There were no waiters in the room at the moment, and he peeped outside on the corridor while he folded the five pages he had scribbled on.

“I want you to take it to your grave”, he said as he turned back again, and distributed the five little scraps. “Treat it more secret than the nuclear launch codes! I’m serious!”

“Hey, all together!”, Toby protested when Leo started to tear his page open.  
He dropped it and raised his hands.

“Okay!”

“There are not enough”, CJ said.

“Josh already knows it.”

“Now I feel left out”, Josh complained.

“Shut up!”, Soda shot back. And almost in a whisper: “You can open it.”

Nobody spoke for an insultingly long time. Soda occupied himself with the leftover cheese on his plate, until he heard the chuckles. His head shot up.  
He had expected CJ to laugh.  
He had not expected everyone else to bite on their fists. Except maybe Toby, of course, who was shaking with silent laughter.

“Okay…”, he muttered.

“Oh, shut it, sourpuss!”, CJ laughed. “That’s your big secret?”

Toby’s laughter finally vocalized, and he was bent over the table.

“Well…”, Soda tried.

“I thought it was something like HeilHitler Curtis”, Leo admitted. 

“It has a nice ring, once you start consider it as a name”, Jed said. “It's almost a nickname. I assume they call you Soda at home.”

“Yes.”

“I really think there are worse names”, Josh chimed in. “You should have kept it. I mean, your brother kept it too, and look how he did.”

Soda groaned, and let his head sink on the table. “No Sodapop would ever work for Gage Whitney. Never.”

Toby was halfway calm again.

“But why would you change your last name too?”, he finally managed. 

Soda shrugged. “That was Pony. He filled it in the form without asking, and I kept it. He thought it was poetic, though we’d never actually seen the sea in our life. It was just the right thing for my new life. Sodapop Curtis was a high-school dropout who repaired cars for three dollars an hour. Sam Seaborn is the guy who got accepted into Princeton and became a lawyer. It was just cleaner, and without...bad memories.”

“That doesn’t explain Norman”, CJ threw in.  
Soda twisted his mouth. “That was my other brother. He was furious, and said I needed some sort of punishment.”

“My grandfather was called Norman”, Leo said.

“A wonderful name. I’m very proud to have it in my passport.”

“Well saved”, Jed grinned. He raised his glass.  
“To the next fight.”

They raised their glasses too.

“We just wasted the beginning of it”, Toby muttered.  
CJ punched him in the shoulder.


End file.
